


Werewolf Dreams

by literaryheckler



Series: Bottle Sprites and Stranger Sights [1]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:03:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3929188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryheckler/pseuds/literaryheckler





	1. Loony Loopy Lupine

It was late, and Martin Valence was finally walking home from work. He worked as a server at some chain restaurant a little over a mile from his apartment, but the pay was good. It let him pay his part of rent and a bit of groceries.

As he passed the bank, Martin saw that it was 10:36pm. His room mate was probably getting out of class now. Martin thought back to when he was a student, and how awful it had been to take five classes while suffering from depression. He wasn't sure how Oliver managed it, but then, Oliver had Anxiety not depression. Maybe it worked differently. He shrugged and walked on. He'd rather think about this where he could be drinking something cold.

The small college town was eerily dark even with the full moon, not like the larger city where Martin grew up. The shadows were so pervasive that every corner could have hidden a troop of people, and Martin would never see them. But then, Lusin College was a small place in a small town, and the only people who stayed here were either old enough to have payed off their mortgages or young enough to be going to college, in which case they were either doing homework or sleeping by now. Lusin was not an easy college despite it's size, and was so well known for it that people that graduated with any GPA above 3.0 could usually get into grad school without an interview.

'You can't stay in a place like that and still have time to have a social life, let alone be in a gang or go mugging,' thought Martin. 'I certainly couldn't.'

Keeping this in mind, Martin walked confidently on, ignoring the little shivers of subtle dread that flitted through him every time he passed a shadow big enough to hide someone with a knife. The sensations only stopped when he reminded himself that, as he was six feet tall and built like a bear, no one in their right mind would pick him as a target. He pointedly did not think about the fact that he didn't know the first thing about fighting, and his size wouldn't help him against someone with a weapon. Martin hated that he got so antsy whenever he walked home late. He loved night time, but when he had first moved in one of his neighbors had told him that this stretch of houses was notorious in the town for being a bad neighborhood. Back where Martin grew up, "bad neighborhood" meant muggings and gunshots in the night. Here, it just meant drug dealers who never had much other than pot, so Martin's nervousness almost never helped.

Tonight it did help, though. Tonight he noticed the shadow that moved against the wall opposite the alleyway. He noticed the indistinct shape freeze at the sound of his footsteps. He set off across the deserted street, but it was too late.

A hunched, enormous form barreled out of the alley. Martin had a glimpse of rows of glistening white before he turned and ran as fast as his legs would carry him. Whatever had been in the alley plowed into him, and he rolled with it, sending his attacker sailing overhead. This time Martin saw what was after him.

It was a wolf, if a wolf was shaped more like the bastard child of a bear and a mastiff than any wolf Martin had ever seen. It's fore-paws were clawed like a bears, and it's shoulders and forelegs were massively over-muscled. The rest of it was build heavily as well, but more for supporting it's own weight during a fight than whatever purpose those massive thews were for. The great bear-dog-thing came at Martin again, jaws spread wide. The only reason Martin wasn't turned into kibble right there was the pick-up truck that roared out of the middle distance and slammed into the bear-dog a split second after the massive jaws closed on Martin's ankle.

As the driver got out of the truck, Martin dazedly watched the massive dog lolloping off into the darkness, whining. His ears were filled with a ringing sound. Must be the tumble he took. No, this ringing sounded real. Why was the driver moving his mouth like that? Martin couldn't hear him say anything. The truck's diesel engine thrummed happily against Martin's shattered leg. Martin was a bit sad that he couldn't taste that sound.

[that's how you do sounds, right? or do you see them?] Finding the thought supremely hilarious, Martin started giggling helplessly. The driver's shoulders dropped, and after a moment he made mouth shapes into his cellphone. The smell of red and blue lights fluttered into Martin's view, and he sneezed. His leg hurt more. He sneezed again, and when his leg hurt even more, he started laughing harder. Pain was hilarious!

Now some really tall people were lifting him onto a stretcher. Their legs were all wrong. Somehow this was sad, and Martin put a hand on one of their messed up legs in commiseration. Maybe if he told them it would be OK they would feel better?

"It's OK, your legs will grow right eventually, and I'll feed you until they do. Imma take care of you, 'k?" Martin was sure he said this very nicely, but one of them frowned and made mouth-shapes at another. This time Martin could hear him, but whatever he said was in some odd language he couldn't follow. He patted the man's odd leg again, looked at his own legs and saw that they were all wrong too, and slipped into a dream.

 

Phil the EMT got into the ambulance last, and looked at the man they'd just gotten off the street. Guy had had a rough night by all accounts. First savaged by a massive dog on the way home, then hit by a pickup going 30 miles an hour. No wonder his bells were ringing real good. God, Phil felt bad for him. He must have been concussed, too. He'd obviously been trying to talk to Archie, comfort him about something, but instead of words he'd just whined and yowled like a dog feeling sad. Jesus, poor guy would probably need speech therapy if he'd been hit that hard. Phil decided he'd visit the man in the hospital if he did end up being there for the long haul. It always made him feel like his job was worth all the death he ended up seeing as one of only 15 EMTs for the county if he could see the people he managed to save recover. And if he could help them recover, well, it's not like there was any better work that needed doing. Not work that he was trained for, anyways.


	2. Box-On-Legs

It woke up in a shiny closed-off cave which roared beneath them, and two creatures resting on ledges beside them. They smelled of smoke and poison and sweat, their fore-paws were long and spidery, and their hind legs were huge in proportion to their bodies, and their snouts were snubbed short. Odd noises and lights flickered on and off around it, and they reflected all around it in the shiny cave. The creatures suddenly stank of startled fear, and one reached out to touch them. This was too much to be born, and it leaped for the long thin crack in the cave from which they could smell clean air. The wall split open, and it fell to the ground, tumbling down a harsh stone path. As it stood up, it saw that the shiny cave was set inside a square creature that roared down the stone path without moving it's legs. It thought that this was very odd. The Box-on-Legs vanished around a stone cube, and it took a moment to asses the situation.

Their left hind paw was sore, as if it had recently healed from being broken. It was bruised all over from the tumble out of the Box-on-Legs, but other than that it was fine. It pricked it's ears forward as a low rumble began in the distance. It sounded a bit like the Box-on-Legs. The rumble grew into a roar, and another Box-on-Legs, this one shorter and more curved, sped by. It found this extremely unnerving, and it began to head off in the direction that it remembered home should be.

It followed the stone paths, Boxes-on-Legs zooming back and forth. Each time one passed it, it spent several minutes cowering, tail tucked between it's legs, under the nearest bush or other form of cover. At last it would feel that it would be safe to leave it's current hiding spot, and it would crawl out and set off again, only to scurry back into a new hidy-hole when the next Box-on-Legs passed.

After about an hour, it had the sense that it was close to Home. It was just coming out from behind a tree it had hidden from the most recent Box-on-Legs under, when it saw another of the strange creatures like had been resting next to it in the first Box-on-Legs. It was smaller than the other two, and it was striding on it's hind legs, it's fore-paws latched onto vines holding a large bundle on it's back. The wind gusted, and it caught the creature's scent, and it's tail started wagging.

This creature was Friend! not just any friend, but a special Friend who helped it when it needed help most! It couldn't quite recall what kind of help Friend gave, but it was sure that the help was very good indeed. It also could not remember Friend's name, but then it couldn't remember it's own, so that was not to be worried about for now. For now it must greet Friend!

"Friend, Friend! I came back, Friend!" it shouted, and it dashed to greet Friend. Friend's head snapped up, and he stumbled to a halt, and fear flooded his scent. Friend was scared of it?! It had to do something about /that/, so rather than tackle Friend as per usual, it butted it's snout into Friend's hand.

It took a bit of nuzzling, but eventually the fear left Friend's scent and Friend got down on one knee to pet it. Friend gave some veeery good scritches, mumbling a greeting and cooing loving words to it. It panted in glee, and it's tail wagged hard enough that it kept smacking the ground. It sat with Friend like this for a while then Friend started speaking. It couldn't understand very well, but it gave it's level best to interpret Friend's odd words.

"ahlryt doh-gee, hoo du you bilongtoo?" Asked Friend as he pet it around the neck. Friend gently pushed it's snout up and peered at it's neck, then muttered, "Noh coler? Ahr youah strae? Yur ahveree priti strae ef you ahr. Ai wunder wethur you ahr ah boi urah guhrl," and Friend gently moved it's hind paw aside so he could get a good look between them.

"Ah guhrl, then? Whell guhrl, Aiv gotah goh hom now, soh ai wihl si you latur. Buhbai, guhrl!" Friend waved, then began walking again. The dog followed Friend back to friend's home, and when Friend closed the door before letting her in, she laid down on the porch to wait for Friend to open the door in the morning.

 

Oliver Wechsel listened to the dog that he had found on the way home whine. It sounded pretty sad to be left out all alone, but Oliver wasn't living alone, so he'd have to check with Martin before he indulged his love for all things furry and adopted the stray. Maybe he'd ask tomorrow. Oliver had had a looong day, well, evening, in class and at work, and no way was he waiting for Martin to get home at whatever god-awful hour he chose to come back at tonight. He usually did, because it was a hell of an idea to be in bed in pee-jays or less if something happened to his room mate, but dammit, it was midterms. Martin would forgive him. If Martin noticed. Oliver was about half convinced that for the first hour or so after getting home, Martin didn't even open his eyes from their exhausted squint.

Oliver dozed off to the sound of the dog's whines falling off into sleepy chuffing snores. In the morning, Oliver was running late, and never noticed that Martin wasn't home. The dog slept on as he tip-toed over and past her, and he ran for class.


	3. Bridal Swine

Martin woke up on the porch that morning unaware that this was but the first day of an extremely confusing and emotionally trying year. The texture of the bricks had dug marks into his skin, and his joints were stiff as boards, and the morning mist fogged his glasses. As he stretched his arms, he tried to remember how he had come to sleep outside. He disliked the outdoors on principle save for during certain kinds of weather, usually being storms or the lead-up to them. Night was far better than day, but still. Bugs. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept outside willingly.

He'd left work, he could remember that much. But what had happened next? He tried to stretch his legs, but it hurt. It hurt a lot. He looked down at his leg and remembered.

The huge dog had attacked him on the way home, and he'd been bitten badly. Really badly. He could remember the crackling pop of his leg breaking, and he was certain it had been absolutely horrible.

Martin was pretty sure the only reason the dog hadn't eaten him outright is because that pickup had hit it. He remembered the EMTs arriving, but nothing after that. Not until he woke up on the porch with a vague memory of a dream that he had been being scratched on the head by Oliver.

But now, his leg wasn't nearly so bad. Sure, it was probably still at least a little broken, but nowhere near the whole thing with his heel kicking his calves like last night. He shrugged and worked his way inside to find his cell phone and call 911.

Later that day in the hospital, Oliver told Martin about the dog he'd met the night before, and they talked about keeping it. As the dog wasn't there anymore, they decided to keep an eye out for her and see if they could convince her to stay the next time she showed up. But the dog didn't show up for a couple weeks, and the issue faded from their minds, replaced by working to get Martin back on his feet.

 

Two weeks after Martin woke up on the porch, he got back from hobbling on his brand new crutches all around town and stopped to check the mail.

"Bill, junk, junk, bill, hey Oliver, how was class? This is for you, beeteedubs."

"Thanks, Mart. Oooh a bill. Just what I wanted for Halloween. Where did you even go? Not like you can go to work with that leg yet if they don't want you sitting down."

"Up the street to get pizza from that little shop that opened last month. Got lost and ended up at Walmart. And seriously? Halloween? That's almost a month and a half from now, numbnuts."

Oliver absently fired off a one-finger salute as he perused the bill. Meanwhile Martin continued going through the mail, flicking trash in the general direction of the garbage can and keeps onto the computer desk for further investigation.

"Time Warner sends their greetings and a request for us to pay up for last month. I'm broke, you?" asked Oliver.

"Until Wednesday, yeah." Martin flipped the last letter over to look at the address, and supressed the urge to gulp. It was a letter from his boss. An official looking one. Oliver glanced up to reply, but spotted Martin's expression and sat up, suddenly looking as anxious as Martin.

"Who's it from, Mart?" he asked.

"Th' Boss," he mumbled as he slit it open. Sure enough, it began with "Mr. Valence: We regret to inform you" and went downhill from there. He read the whole thing through, then again. He set it down, stood up, sat again, picked up the letter and read it again, then finally dropped it to the table and went to take a shower. He came out to see Oliver set down the letter and slap a hand to his face in exasperation.

"You mean to tell me," began Oliver, his voice steadily rising from a low growl to an enraged shout, "that your boss is firing you for breaking your leg?!"

"Nah, he's firing me because I'm not going to be coming in to work a shift for the next God knows how long, and since it didn't happen while I was on the clock he doesn't have to play nice," muttered Martin. He could understand, sort of. Didn't mean he liked it. "Hell, I'd take it to court if-"

"You'd fuckin win it in a heartbeat," interrupted Oliver heatedly.

"I was gonna say that, if you had let me. But he knows we couldn't afford the court fees."

Oliver quieted down. "Oh," he mumbled.

"Yeah. Well, one silver lining, at least."

"Wassat?"

"I don't have to spend shifts working with Frank anymore. How that man keeps a job as a server at a nice-ish restaraunt when he wears the smell of BO and sardines like a fuckin shroud of death will forever mystify me."

They sat there in silence for a minute, then the corner of Martin's lip quivered slightly upward. Oliver began shaking slightly. They resolutely did not look at each other.

"Well," said Oliver in a strained voice, "at least it's a shroud, not a veil."

"Why''s that?" asked Martin in a voice just as strained, his face working frantically to stay smooth.

"'cause if it was a veil," answered Oliver, stuttering from how hard he was trying to stay calm, "he might have convinced himself it was a bridal veil. Just imagine," and at this point his voice went as clear as he could make it, and he put on an aproximation of the manner of a priest reading vows, "'You may now kiss the swine.'"

This was too much. Martin glanced at Oliver, and as their eyes met, their faces twisted into grins and they burst into laughter. Oliver's gleeful cackle and Martin's deeper guffaw rang through the apartment for hours, and every time they managed to calm down a bit they would look at eachother and start laughing again.


	4. Celebration Cider

Martin spent the next week hobbling around town, trying to scope out who would hire a semi-crippled man. He found plenty of businesses that would hire him once his leg was healed, but no one wanted someone who couldn't even stand without crutches long enough to change the ink in the printer.

He was tottering out of a meeting with the manager at the local Goodwill when he saw it. A microphone. Not the usual cheapo shit he'd normally find in anywhere specializing in second-hand goods, no, this was an old ribbon microphone, cords and all in a leather case lined with emerald velvet. And to cap it all off, this microphone used a three-prong XLR connection, which he had an adapter for. If he could afford it, he could use it right away when he got home. Sure, it wouldn't be as good as if he ran it through a mixer, but his mixer was still at his grandpa's place, and anyways, he just needed to make sure it worked for now.

_Holy. Crap. How has no one bought this before I got here?_

He picked up the case, and saw the tag. His jaw dropped like a rock. He reverently placed the microphone back in the case, flipped the latch closed, and went to the register. The clerk punched in the price on the tag and added tax.

"That'll be twelve eighty six," she said, and popped her bubblegum. Martin payed up, the grin growing on his face. Getting a good-quality mike at this price would let him splurge a bit on the rest of the sound set-up he'd been slowly putting together. That, combined with the desktop he'd bought last year and amped up to the best tech birthday money could buy, would let him start up a podcast. He'd been toying with the idea for a while, as he could make a fair bit of money that way and it was fun to boot, but until this lucky find he'd been stonewalled by the money he'd have to invest in a microphone.

Martin limped home fast enough that he was fairly sure he'd set back the healing on his foot at least another few weeks, but he had to get his new microphone to safety. The meager few job applications he'd managed to get went onto the table by the door, then he sat at his computer and plugged in the shitty Walmart-fare XLR-to-USB adapter, then the mike cord to the adapter. He opened Audacity and, fingers trembling with trepidation, hit record and hummed into the mike.

Nothing. Martin starred in horror for a minute, and realized he'd forgotten to plug the mike cord into the mike itself. He plugged it in and tried again. This time he got something! Martin put on the big squishy headphones he used when the world got to be too much, and hit replay.

Ode to Joy started playing somewhere in a back corner of Martin's head. Martin pressed record and joined in, and amused himself for a couple hours layering his voice to produce a full symphonic rendition acapella.

 

Oliver came home that evening to see Martin performing the most lop-sided one-man-waltz he'd ever seen, and to a recording of himself to boot. He tried not to laugh, but it was hard not to when every other step in the waltz included more than a bit of a drunken stagger. And the stagger actually was drunken, he noticed. A half-empty bottle of the booze he knew Martin saved for special occasions sat on the floor under the computer desk, and going by Martin's jubilant tones, Oliver could guess where the rest had gone.

"Martin, you're gonna break your leg again." Martin kept dancing, and didn't even seem to register Oliver's statement. 

" _Freude, schöner Götterfunken, tochter aus Elysium!_ "

"Martin."

" _Wir betreten feuERTRUNKEN-_ "

"Martin!"

" _HIMMLISCHE, DEIN HEILIGTHUM!_ "

"MARTIN!"

" _DEINE ZAU_ \- wha _hwup!_ " Martin spun around to look at Oliver and tripped, landing gut-first on the back of the couch.

"I was going to say 'sit down before you fall down,' but it looks like you beat me to the punch," said Oliver wryly. Martin grinned, and the grin was as drunkenly lop-sided as his dancing. Oliver grinned back at him, then went on. "You wanna tell me what happened?"

"I was at Goodwill and I saw a thing-"

"You always see a thing when we go there, that's nothing new," interjected Oliver.

"But this was a special thing!" exclaimed Martin.

"They're all special to you," muttered Oliver, but waved at Martin to continue.

"This time it actually _was_ , though. It was a ribbon microphone. A frickin' good one, too! And it works!" said Martin, his eyes gleaming. Now Oliver understood. Martin was a bit of an odd duck, and there were relatively few thing one could rely on him to be interested in, and one of those things was audio recording equipment. Oliver was pretty sure his room mate was about to burst with the need to tell him all about the specs on his new mike, and started mentally preparing for a lecture that was sure to be interesting.

"Alright, Mart, let me get us some nibbles and drinks that won't make us puke, and then you can tell me all about it," he said. Martin leaped off the sofa and rapidly hobbled for the booze, but Oliver was faster on his two good legs, and managed to intercept him. "No, down! No more booze until you've got past the hang-over! You know the rules!"

"Aw, c'mon Oli, just a sip!" whined Martin, but Oliver was shaking his head.

"No, Mart. I will not allow a repeat of last Easter," he said seriously.

"Oli, that wasn't celebration cider, that was holiday hooch!"

"Oh my god you've named them?!"

Martin shrugged and reached for the booze again. Oliver held it higher, then, seeing the gleam growing in Martin's eye, started backing away. Martin advanced on him, a wicked grin accompanying the gleam, and he hooked his fingers and started wiggling them. Oliver gave it all up as a bad job and sprinted for the bathroom, shrieking as Martin got in one good tickle before the door slammed. They sat on opposite sides of the locked door, laughing until their sides hurt.


	5. Chermak the Gampr

One month from the night of Martin's attack, Oliver came home from class early. The lab had closed for the next several days, seeing as how one of his fellow students had somehow managed to spray hydrochloric acid across the room, splattering everyone and everything with acid. Oliver had been in the bathroom and had come back to see a half-dozen classmates standing in the hall, wearing nothing but shocked expressions and a liberal coating of water. He had peered through the small window set into the door and seen the rest of the class hosing off as best they could with the single shower the ancient lab held. Once everyone was clean, the professor sent everyone home save for the one that had sprayed the acid. Oliver left in time to hear the first words of what promised to be an extremely entertaining lecture on lab safety procedures, but he didn't stick around to listen.

Oliver turned onto the sidewalk that led to their apartment, and got a face-full of happy dog. It took him a moment to pull away from the licks enough to see the dog's features, but he recognized her. It was the dog that had greeted him last month, then vanished!

"Hello, girl! Where've you been?" gushed Oliver. "I missed you so much, puppy. You wanna come with me, girl? Come on!"

He went to the porch and sat on the steps so he could play with the dog. They played through to the end of the October evening, romping around the yard and porch. Finally Oliver looked at his watch, and realized he hadn't seen Martin yet. He hadn't been inside when Oliver went in for a rag to play tug-o-war with, and he didn't have a job that would keep him up late.

Oliver pulled out his cell phone and dialed Martin's number. A moment later, _Gavotte en Rondeau_ started playing from the window to Martin's room. Oliver looked in, but didn't see him. He couldn't think where Martin could be if he hadn't brought his phone.

Martin had a problem with speaking to people if he was stressed or didn't know them well, and he would often resort to typing things out or recording what he wanted to say and playing it back on his phone. If he hadn't brought his phone with him wherever he'd gone, he wouldn't have been expecting to talk to people, and the only thing he would have been doing if that was the case was exercising his leg.

'But if he was exercising, he'd be back by now!' Oliver thought, starting to get worried. Before he could get too worried, though, he had to deal with the dog.

"What should I name you, girl? I can't just keep calling you 'girl' if you're going to stay with me and Martin, can I." Oliver pondered for a moment, then grinned. "I know just the thing!"

 

Chermak followed Friend into the house. They had played together for a long time, and she was ready to rest. Friend was too, and he sat in the chair next to a glowing box. Friend called it Computer. Chermak had no idea what Friend was doing, but apparently Computer could tell Friend things, and Friend told Chermak that she was a Gampr. Chermak sat up straight and tried to look solemn at the declaration, but she was too excited and her tail wouldn't hold still. It was not every day that a dog was given a job! Chermak might not have been able to speak much Armenian, but she knew that Gampr meant that she was a watch dog. Chermak decided that Computer gave good advice, and should be protected as well. Chermak could contain her joy no further, and she bounded up to lick Friend on the face. Friend sputtered out a laugh, and they spent some time rassling on the floor.

After a while, it got dark outside, and Chermak noticed Friend yawn. She nosed his hand, but he just pet her muzzle absent-mindedly while staring at Computer. Chermak wasn't too pleased that she was being ignored in favor of a glowy box, but she understood that Computer held some knowledge that Friend wanted. Maybe if friend got what he wanted, Computer would stop being so interesting to him?

Suddenly Computer flashed, and Friend sat up. He scanned the glowing face of Computer, and groaned.

"I can't believe this. How far can a guy on crutches get without anyone seeing him! His mom hasn't spoken with him, none of his friends have, none of the neighbors, no one! I can't fucking believe this," he ranted. Chermak whuffled at his elbow, and Oliver sighed. "I'm gonna go to bed. You wanna come with?"

Chermak barked happily, and followed Oliver to bed.

 

Martin woke that morning to sunlight on his face, which was odd, as his window was north-facing. he pondered this vaguely as he slowly woke up. His first fully conscious thought was "Ah well," soon followed by "This pillow is really weird."

The pillow rose and fell slowly, in time with Martin's own breathing. It was far more dense than his usual pillow, and squishier to boot. He opened his eyes to see what it was, and with a jolt of horror, he suddenly realized what his pillow was. He clamped both hands over his mouth to hold in the horrified noise his body tried to make, and carefully inched himself off of Oliver's bare chest. Oli may be a man, but his body wasn't, and Martin was certain his friend would hate him forever for violating his privacy like that. Martin certainly hated anyone touching him without the go-ahead, even just a friendly pat on the shoulder, and this was so much more than a pat on the shoulder. This was an invasion of something that Oli hated about himself. Martin ran to the bathroom to hide, only to start whimpering when he saw his reflection in the mirror.


	6. Nonverbal Woes

As a joke when they first moved into the apartment, Martin superglued a ruler on the wall opposite the mirror, with the twelve inch mark level with the top of his head. Oliver flipped his shit every time he and Martin were in line with the ruler, because it gave Martin a chance to start making short jokes again, as Oliver's head didn't pass the three inch mark.

Today, even standing as tall as he could without going on tiptoe, Martin's head was level with the ten inch mark.

The whimper grew in Martin's throat until it escaped, and his eyes fixed on the gap between his old and new heights. He couldn't look away. This was bad. Worse than unexpected touching, worse than quiet hands, worse than bees. His shoulders started shaking, and the whimper grew into a whine, and tears started falling from his eyes, but he couldn't look away from the place his face should be but wasn't. The whine grew louder, and as it became a long moan of despair, Oliver came in.

 

The lack of a warm bed-mate had brought him from deep slumber to a light doze, and Martin's distress woke him up the rest of the way. He ran in, certain his friend had hurt himself, to see Martin just standing in front of the mirror in rumpled pajamas. He was sobbing now, tear-reddened eyes fixed on a point just above his reflection.

Oliver approached from behind, so Martin would be able to see him in the mirror, and put a hand in front of his face, breaking his focus on whatever was upsetting him. Martin immediately calmed a bit, enough that Oliver could steer him to the living room without making him flip out at unexpected touching.

Not that Oliver had ever seen his friend wig out this much before in the first place.

It took some time, and a lot of gummy bears, but eventually Oliver managed to get his friend to something approaching normalcy. Martin hadn't spoken yet, but that was pretty normal. Martin didn't usually speak much at all unless it was "Social Time", to make a phenomenally bad pun, or to wax lyrical about his latest find in "nifty shit." But Oliver knew he wasn't back to even ground yet. Martin's fingertips were tapping his thumb-tips, which he did all the damn time, but never this fast. Oliver just let his friend tap, and sat quietly, waiting for Martin to tell him what happened. He always did, every time he had a flip-out.

Martin said it was because he was just trying to make sure Oliver knew his buttons so he wouldn't press them by accident. Oliver was pretty sure he was trying to apologize, in his own round-about way, both for freaking out and for freaking Oliver out in turn.

 

After being plied with gummy bears and hot drinks and shoulder-leans for an hour and a half, Martin felt human again. He had to tell Oli what had happened. Oli had told him when Martin revealed that he was autistic that Martin would have to tell him what upset him, so that Oli would make sure it wouldn't happen again. Martin had promised, so when he thought he could move without freaking out again, he pulled out his phone and shot Oli a text.

_gonna record this on computer, need to do the whole works._

Oliver rummaged in a pocket, and a moment later a reply came.

_the works?_

Martin nodded, and replied, /background music, full recording kit, and an hour with audacity.

_You're really that upset about this?_

_yeah dipshit why else_

A soft snort came from Oli's general direction. _i thought there was a chance you just wanted an excuse to use your new mike_

Martin grinned. _well. it *will* be a joy to use. but no, i would have said so._

_alrighty. i'll go on a walk. hour and a half?_

_yup_

_bye_

Oliver got up, dropped about a dozen more gummy bears on Martin's head, and left. All alone now, Martin set up the portable recording room he'd made out of bedding foam, plywood, and about a million large zip-ties. He set up the second-hand mike stand, shock mount, and pop filter. He hung the ribbon microphone and cord just right and plugged them in. Finally he put on his recording headphones and started messing with Audacity's settings to get the best possible sound. When everything was in as perfect order as could be made, Martin pressed record, and started talking. Oliver came in at one point between takes, but Martin thought Oli must have realized he was still recording, because he didn't speak, just went to his room and quietly closed the door.

Martin finished recording, and set about editing. He cut out the bits of waffling when he was trying to decide what to say next, the pauses where the memory of the mirror had made him start to flip out again, and the blank stretches where he'd stopped talking to fiddle with settings some more. Next came the soundtrack. He had to find something to convey how wrong the whole experience had felt, but most songs like that were loud, energetic songs, and this had been the quiet kind of wrong that parked a tent in your front lawn and camped out for weeks.

Of coarse, it hadn't lasted for weeks, but who knew how long Martin would have stood there if Oli hadn't intervened?

Martin settled on _Hey You_ by Pink Floyd, and just turned the volume on that track down. Finally, he converted the file to MP3, and sent Oli a text smiley face so he would know it was time to listen to the recording.


	7. Shitflip

Oliver uploaded Martin's recording to his ipod, and sat down to listen.

The first thing he noticed, as he did every time Martin made a recording, was that the recording sounded nothing like the original. Sure, voices were always slightly different when recorded. But in Martin's case, the difference wasn't in the compression and decompression of the recording. The difference was in Martin himself. Lesser people got stage fright when they set up to record their own voice. The opposite was true for Martin.

Martin's normal voice was typically either a whisper or a near shout, as though he couldn't decide whether he wanted people to hear him or not. It was dry with sarcasm, and raspy from lack of use. He didn't speak or vocalize to himself, he didn't speak if he had nothing to say, and the concept of small-talk evaded him entirely. Given that his usual day-to-day interaction was nil save for Oliver, and more than half of that was via text, Martin could and did occasionally go days without speaking. He didn't use very much slang or other altercations to the original words, including a lot of contractions. As Oliver occasionally told people who were first meeting Martin, it occasionally seemed that speech was not part of Martin's vocabulary, and when he did speak he often sounded like someone boning up on their knowledge of a third or fourth language in preparation for some journey.

Martin's recording voice, on the other hand, was a work of art. He spoke in a smooth, casual tone, without any hint that this might very well be the first time he's used his vocal cords in thirty six hours. He bantered with his listeners, even when he deleted the recording before any but himself had listened to it. He referenced pieces of current events the way most people comment on the weather, and used slang and contractions. Oliver had seen his face during a recording session, and Martin's eyes had been closed and his fingers twitching, as though conducting a conversation and an orchestra at the same time. His recordings were, in short, beautiful.

This recording was no different. Oliver was a good five minutes in before he managed to pay attention to any of the actual words Martin had spoken.

 

_"Yes, my morning has had quite a bit of drama outside the norm. You ever wake up one bright early morning, and something in your head whispers to you, 'Martin Valence there's a great day a-comin',' and you answer to that little voice 'you gotta be on crack or something,' because that's how my day started. Didn't even open my eyes and that little conversation was already happening._

_And I know this voice has got to be lying, because everything's gone all funny around me. And for those of you listening who've listened before, you know that means somethin' really off the hook is happenin'._

_See, i don't remember how I got to bed. One minute I'm putting away the last of the dishes, the next i'm lying in bed with the sun in my eyes. And my bedroom doesn't have a window._

_So I'm lyin there tryin' to suss out what the dick's happened, and I realize that my pillow is a very odd pillow. It's hard in some spots, squishy yet firm in others, and it's moving up and down real slow. You've probably realized what my pillow was, but let me take you along the path my mind took to reach the same point you have._

_Anyways, I'm just holdin as still as can be, trying to figure out what's what, and I reach out and poke that pillow. And to my complete and utter shock, it slaps my hand away. Now this is more confusing than anything else, as I am not a morning person in the slightest, and my brain was still running on what could charitably be named "fumes". But I'm awake enough by now that i realize i'm not gonna find anything out if i don't open my eyes. So I do._

_And lo and behold, not three inches from my nose is Oliver's left tit. And God help me the first thought in my head is 'damn, that is a nice tit,' shortly followed by 'I'm a dead man. Oliver is going to find out and he is going to kill me, and I am too young to die.'_

_So I very quietly flip my shit and leave, as you do. I head off to the bathroom because I've got to close a door on my shitflip and I've also got to piss, so might as well take care of two birds with one stone. And I take my piss, and I flip my shit, and as I'm just about to walk out the door I catch sight of something in the mirror._

_You may remember the joke I played on Oliver last spring, in which I glued a ruler to the wall opposite the mirror so I would have continual reason to make short jokes at him. Well, it seems that either Oliver had gotten me real good by raising that ruler up a few inches, or I've lost some height."_

 

The recording ended. Oliver looked up to see martin gazing forlornly at the ruler, measuring himself again and again. Oliver walked up to the ruler. It read the same height for him as it always had, which meant only one thing. He turned and measured himself against Martin. Martin's chin, usually level with the top of Oliver's head, now came to Oliver's eyebrows.

Martin had shrunk.


	8. Spoons VS Joules

"Alright, first things first we've gotta figure out how much you've changed, other than height," said Oliver. Martin, who seemed to have used up his day's allotment of words, tried to respond, but ended up just nodding glumly. Oli would understand. Maybe.

Martin stood up and began to do everything Oliver ordered him to do. He stripped to his boxers and held his arms up while Oliver took measurements like he had when they were prepping for a cosplay. Oliver measured his chest, his waist, and countless other minutia. As with the last time they had done this, Martin ended up retreating to his room afterwards while Oliver worked to compare the measurements to the old ones.

"Okay," said Oliver after they reconvened in the living room, "it looks like you shrank proportionally to your height for everything like arm length, leg length, and such. But you actually shrank more in width. I think you've lost a whole size for just about everything."

Martin still couldn't work up any words, but he shrugged nonchalantly, trying to convey that he was OK with that part. The more he thought about it, he realized, the more okay he actually was. The big problem he'd had was the sudden disconnect from his mental self and his physical self. Now that the shock was over, he could see that this had some intriguing possibilities.

His clothes for one, he was actually pretty pleased about. Being a large man, the variety of clothing open to him was mostly either plain tee shirts in dull colors, and shitty button-up plaid in the "Big And Tall" section. Dropping even one size opened a lot of possibilities, and maybe he could finally wear something bright. The flat, ugly colors that were his main options in tee shirts for his old size were often too close to that nasty shade of lavender that made his insides roil.

Another fun thing would be measuring the changes in his lifestyle that the size change would cause. He knew enough of the physics of biology to know that the bigger the organism, the less energy it could devote to anything outside of basic survival. Would the change give him more energy in his day to day life, or would the stress of the change sap more than it gave? This was a job for science. He had to start documenting changes as soon as he could.

He looked back at Oliver, to see the grin that said he knew Martin had been having thinky-thoughts. It was the same sly flash of teeth, and until Martin had started mocking him for it, a gleeful request to be involved in the plotting always accompanied it. For some bizarre reason, Oliver was convinced that whenever Martin started thinking in the middle of a conversation, adventure was about to ensue.

"Well?" asked Oliver.

Martin strode over to the computer desk and rummaged around in a drawer. He found what he was looking for, and showed it to Oliver. The sight of the graph paper notebook in his hand made Oliver's grin grow a bit. Oliver liked doing science just as much as Martin, and all of their plans began with that notebook.

The discussion that followed would be highly unusual to anyone not used to the speech habits of the two scientists. Only one of the pair spoke verbally, and the majority of the exercise was conducted via a combination of gestures and doodling. They made half a dozen charts before settling on a style that worked for both of them. They argued about measurements for nearly an hour, stopping only for dinner. After they ate they decided to measure in inches, pounds, clothes sizes, and spoons. When asked what "spoons" was supposed to represent, Martin told Oliver that it was the first word that came into his head.

"Spoons isn't a measurement, Mart."

_would you like to measure ego depletion in liters, then?_

"No, that's ridiculous."

_so is measuring it in joules, Oli._

Oliver started laughing. "Well it is a measurement of energy, right?"

Martin sighed. _Yes, but not that kind._

And with that, Oliver was distracted by a cat on the outside ledge of the kitchen window, and the conversation derailed into a discussion on cats and their plans for the next week.

 

Over the course of the week after Martin began his changes, he lost a grand total of three inches, leaving him at five feet, ten inches tall. He also lost thirty five pounds and an entire size in both shirts and pants. He was pretty sure he had gained at least three spoons, but as they hadn't decided exactly what spoons was supposed to represent in measurable terms, that was debatable. He had noticed that he was drinking a noticeably lower amount of tea, and as tea helped him recover some of those intangible pieces of silverware, he was considering working in "cups of tea" into the measurement system somehow. In a similar vein, Oliver said he was stimming a little less often.

Oliver looked over Martin's shoulder at the chart on the bathroom wall.

"We gotta come up with something for Spoons," he said. "I was browsing tumblr the other day and saw some people using it in the sense we are, I figure that's where you got the idea."

Martin shrugged. That was probably about right. Martin's memory for a lot of things was shot these days. He'd been horribly stressed from being jobless, and unless it was something to do with items of immediate interest, he tended to ignore them even more than usual.

"I was thinking," replied Martin, "I drink a lot of tea whenever I have to deal with something that uses spoons. Maybe we could work a metric around that?"

"You also stim afterwards," said Oliver. "The more emotionally exhausting it is, the longer you do the finger-taps and stuff before you're up for verbals. Maybe spoons spent can be minutes stimming minus cups of tea?"

"So we take measurements throughout the day, and do the math in the evening."

"Sounds good. Ready to do some science?"

"Hell ye."


	9. Other Friend

A couple of weeks passed. Martin stayed at five foot nine and two hundred fifty pounds, and kept wearing his new violently yellow 2XL t shirt and size 42 shorts. He and Oliver calculated his average daily spoon usage to be around 38 spoons, and while it was only a guess, they were fairly sure his old count had been in the low forties. He was able to join his friends in their daily activities for the first time in months, and their lives had progressed normally without him. It made him a bit regretful that he couldn't be a bigger part of their lives, but his interpersonal skills were shaky at best, and left him unable to use verbal communication for days at worst.

Martin had a very hard time recognizing other people's emotions unless he had been near them for a long enough time that he picked up on their cues. With his family, or Oliver, Martin could generally either pick up the general gist of the emotion, or even more detailed estimations in the case of Oliver, who had trained himself to use very broad facial expressions to display his emotion. Oliver's expressions were broad enough that it was easy for Martin to pick up more subtle details, and since they had lived together long enough, Martin had eventually figured them out enough that he could pick up Oliver's state of mind as well as anyone.

Other people, however, left far fewer clues for Martin to pick up. He was left trying to guess from tone and word choice a lot of the time, and the sheer mental effort had left him exhausted, up until recently. Now, with the increase in spoonage, it was close to his limit, but he could still have fun.

 

"So, how's the job hunt going?" Ginger, one of Martin's friends, had come over to the apartment to visit.

Martin suppressed a groan. "Not good, no one is gonna take me on until I'm free of this crap," he said, poking the cast still on his leg.

Ginger winced, nodding. "How long until you get it off?"

"Doc says some time in the next month or so." She nodded, and Martin supposed she was trying to show sympathy. He glanced up at the clock. He was starting to run low on spoons, and he needed an excuse to get rid of her without offending her or being mean. He didn't want that, but he also didn't want to be nonverbal tomorrow. They had been chatting amiably for a little over an hour, and it was starting to get dark. When he mentioned that, she sighed.

"Yeah, I probably need to be getting back. I've got another damn paper for Professor Dick-for-Brains."

"Want me to walk you back?"

"Oh hell no," she said, looking shocked, "You've got a broken leg, you're supposed to stay here!"

Martin grinned. "Nah, I've got to exercise it so it doesn't go all limp and shit." She still looked a bit dubious, so he added, "I'll be fine, if I need help getting back I'll call a cab."

"OK, but if you need a cab I'm paying for it."

"Deal." 

 

The first drops of rain fell when they had just passed the half-way point between Martin's apartment and Ginger's dorm.

"I am totally calling you that cab," she said as they hid from the sheeting rain in one of the small gazebos provided to smokers on campus by Lusin College. Martin couldn't help but feel grateful. The rain was the nasty lukewarm that left him feeling greasy and unclean, and he wasn't sure he wouldn't just hide from it in Ginger's dorm room if she didn't call the cab.

Just then a dog, a cocker spaniel by the looks of it, trundled into the gazebo. Martin and Ginger both squatted down and began to pet it. There was a moment of wariness, and then it succumbed to the pets, and all was right with the world in that little gazebo.

Right up until it bit Ginger's hand and latched on.

There was a split second of stunned silence, then Ginger shrieked, and Martin gave the dog an almighty kick in the ribs that sent it flying off into the rain. The dog bounced, rolled to the bottom of a small hill, and came up running, tearing off into the bushes yipping for all it was worth.

Martin sat on the floor of the gazebo next to Ginger and examined her hand. It was bloody, but nothing was broken like with Martin's leg, and the dog had looked fine other than being soaked clean through, so probably no nasty infection. He used some medical tape he kept in his pockets for his cast to wrap up her hand, and they sat in mostly silence, Ginger being too busy cursing under her breath to speak out loud, and Martin being completely out of words for the day. Eventually, the rain began to ease up, and they walked the rest of the way to Ginger's dorm. She signed Martin in, royally messing up Martin's name since she had to use her bitten hand to write, and they went up the two flights of stairs to her room. Once they got there, they unwrapped the bandage to get a better look at the bite, and they stared at what they found.

The bite was very slowly, but very visibly, healing itself. Their shocked eyes met for an instant, and then the room slewed sideways, and Martin and Ginger were both gone.

 

The other residents of the dorm Ginger stayed in that night sent multiple reports of a ruckus in Ginger's room that night, ranging from "loud noises during quiet hours" to "watching movies with the volume up," and from "making animal noises" to "keeping dogs in the dorm." The staff went up to her room to look, but when they arrived, there was no noise. They figured that whatever she had been up to, it must have ended.

At one point around half-past midnight, a few minutes past curfew, one of the resident staff, Frank, checked the guest book and saw that Ginger had signed in a Monfin Uolemoe, whatever the hell name that was supposed to be, and never signed him out. He resignedly trudged up the stairs to hopefully find out that she had simply let him leave and forgotten to write it down. He knocked a couple times, and when no one answered, used the master key on his belt ring to open the door. When he saw the room was empty, he shrugged, closed and locked the door, and went back downstairs to mark "Monfin" as having left.

 

Back in Ginger's room, Chermak and her Other Friend slept on. Chermak's dreams were full of Friends, and even though the Friend she was with now was also a dog and a boy, somehow in the dream her Other Friend was a girl and walked like her First Friend.


	10. Martin-y-ness

Ginger woke in the early hours of the morning. She lay still for a time, simply reveling in the knowledge that today was a Saturday. She could sit here on her ass for the entire day, and no one would bother her because her room mate was out for the weekend. She sighed in contentment, and something about the sound was off. She muzzily opened her eyes. All the color was gone from the world save a bit of dull yellow and blue, but this was to be expected. Her lights were off, and the sun hadn't cleared the horizon yet.

What wasn't to be expected was the dog's snout replacing her nose. She tried to take the fake nose off, only for a dog's paw to come up and scratch at it. It felt like she was scratching her own face. Then she remembered the night before.

She and martin had come into her room, Ginger recalled, and taken off the bandages to get a look at how bad the bite the dog had given her was. The bite had healed up completely, they had exchanged a startled glance, her vision had twisted, and the next moment she was a very confused and rather small dog, and Martin was a very dazed, very large white dog.

She had tried to talk, but all that came out was barking, so she tried cursing. That had worked like a charm, and Dog-Martin had looked very amused, but something had been off about him. However Ginger had tried to communicate with Martin, the dog that had taken his place looked just as happily confused as if he had been a regular dog and she a regular human. She had eventually given in to the bigger dog's obvious desire to play, resigned to her temporary fate.

She looked over at Dog-Martin, who was still covered in the blankets he'd wiggled under when he went to sleep. She couldn't escape the feeling that something was very, very wrong with him. He had all the little subconscious mannerisms that Martin normally had, like the inability to realize when someone was trying to make eye-contact, the fingers, well, paws tapping on every surface they came in contact with, stuff like that. What he didn't have was the Martin-y-ness that made him Martin and not someone else with his habits. The dog didn't have anything in it's mind beyond basic Doggy. It was bizarre.

As these thoughts meandered through Ginger's mind, she got out of the little nest she'd made for herself the night before. The sun was rising, and she'd been too distracted by becoming a dog to get a look at what kind of dog she'd become. She knew she was one of the smaller breeds, given how much bigger Dog-Martin was. She walked up to the switch by the door and hopped up on the chair covered in dirty laundry, and flipped the switch with her nose. She jumped down, and turned to look at her reflection in the mirror on the back of the door.

She was a Cocker Spaniel, just like the one that had bitten her. With a bit of a vindictive glee at the thought, she noticed that her coat was much better cared for than the other's had been. It was shorter too, so that it wouldn't drag in the mud, or get too hot in the blistering summer that was only just relinquishing it's grip.

She admired herself in the mirror for another couple of minutes, and she was just turning around to go harass Dog-Martin, when the world around her gave a massive twisting jolt, and she was human again. She put a hand to her head as her dizziness almost made her fall, and let out a squawk of surprise as she actually did fall. A moment later she shouted again as she realized something she hadn't the night before. Her clothes hadn't joined Ginger for the transformation. They lay in a puddle where she had first changed, and she wasn't wearing a stitch of it, now.

She stole a glance over at Martin, but he was still asleep, and still a dog. She frowned, sure that this meant something. She dressed quickly, and moved her laundry so she could use the chair to put on her shoes. She had to go find Oliver. Maybe he would know if Martin had turned into a dog before.

 

The doorbell rang just as Oliver was picking up his cell phone to call Martin and Ginger, and when he saw who was at the door, he flung it open. Ginger was completely blindsided by the hug, and dropped the leash she'd improvised out of a couple of belts. After a moment of hugging, Oliver hustled Ginger and the dog he recognized as the one that had visited twice now inside.

"I was just about to call you," he started. "I haven't seen Martin since the two of you were over. He's always so careful to stick by whatever schedule he's given me. You wouldn't happen to know where he's gone off to?"

Ginger gave Oliver a skeptical look. "He's right here, Oliver."

"What?"

"Martin's right here," said Ginger, pointing at the dog, which was currently investigating the underside of the refrigerator. Oliver laughed, sure it was a joke. His laughter died off as he realized that Ginger wasn't joking in the slightest.

"You mean to tell me that he's turned into a dog?"

"Yep. Tail and everything."

Oliver stared at Ginger. Ginger stared back. Oliver opened his mouth to say, "Bullshit," when the dog shot to its feet. It stumbled drunkenly, as though it had spun in circles for several minutes and was only now trying to stand still. It sat down suddenly, unable to stand any longer, and gave an almighty sneeze.

And from one moment to the next, the dog vanished, and a dazed and naked Martin was left on the kitchen floor in it's place.


End file.
